Giving Farmers a Fighting Chance

This content is provided courtesy of the MIT students listed in the Project Team table, and is used with permission.

About

Most of the Zacatecas State of Mexico has semi-desert terrain, coupled with low per capita income. Despite its dry climate, agriculture is a key economic driver. Zacatecas produces more beans, chili peppers and nopales than any other state, and is a major producer of agave, grapes, jicima, peaches, and tomatoes.

The farmers lack communication between their rural communities and cannot establish equitable pricing, let alone have access to distribution or storage centers. As a result, they are at the mercy of middlemen who pay next to nothing for produce, and these communities remain locked in a poverty cycle.

The objective is to enable farmers to communicate (and thus present a united front) that will enable them to escape the endless cycle of rural poverty that in turn accelerates the de-population of the countryside (Zacatecas sends more immigrants to the US than any other Mexican state).

The description is to use peer-to-peer mobile technologies (cell phones) - easily adopted, understood, replicated, and maintained - in a rural area, and whose deployment will enable farmers to communicate and collaborate so that they, not the middlemen, can determine fair prices for their crops and ensure a marginally better economic (and socially cohesive) future.

Partners

ITESM (Tecnológico de Monterrey), Zacatecas, Mexico

Project Team

Project Documentation

Slides are presented courtesy of the students, used with permission. Videos are from nextlab on Vimeo, and are not covered by our Creative Commons license.